Funny Girl(81)

‘Hello, dear,’ said Lucy.

‘Hello,’ said Sophie. ‘I like your dress.’

‘Isn’t it darling? Congratulations on your show.’

‘Have you seen it? Did you like it?’ said Sophie.

She couldn’t stop herself. It was a mistake, of course. She knew it was a mistake because she saw a door close in Lucy’s head, the door that led from her brain to those eyes. Those eyes were still looking at her, but they may as well have been behind a television screen. Lucy had gone.

‘Oh, it’s all right,’ Sophie said then, except she was squeaking now, not speaking. ‘You wouldn’t have. Sorry.’

‘Thank you so much for coming all this way to say hello, dear,’ said Lucy, and then she was led away. Nobody took a photograph.

‘Oh,’ said Diane. ‘Oh, well. What an old bag.’

‘No,’ said Sophie. ‘No. I did it all wrong.’

‘What did you do wrong?’

‘I shouldn’t have asked that.’

‘Why on earth not?’

‘I overstepped the mark.’

‘How are you supposed to know where the mark is?’

But she had known. It was very faint, and nobody else would have known it was there, apart from the two of them, her and Lucy. (The two of them! Her and Lucy! Even that distinction, between them and the rest of the world, seemed presumptuous.) Sophie had seen it and she had ignored it, because she’d been greedy. She had asked Lucy for proof that she existed, and Lucy wasn’t able to provide it, because Sophie didn’t exist, not yet, and maybe not ever, not in the way that Lucy existed. She began to fear that she would always be greedy, all the time. Nothing ever seemed to fill her up. Nothing ever seemed to touch the sides.

They took two taxis to Downing Street, even though the five of them could have fitted into one. Clive said that it would look undignified, bumping heads and extricating limbs while policemen and assistants watched. Sophie wanted to be with Clive, but he said he didn’t want the stars to be in one cab and the nobodies in another.

‘I wouldn’t have thought of that,’ said Sophie.

‘You know why not?’ said Bill. ‘Because you don’t think in terms of stars and nobodies.’

‘You know what I mean,’ said Clive. ‘You’re not a nobody to me. You’re just a nobody to the rest of the world.’

They had to knock on the door, as if Number Ten was a house, and a secretary showed them into a reception area before leading them upstairs. On the wall over the staircase there was an ascending line of pictures, paintings and then photographs of every prime minister in the history of Britain, and Sophie silently chastised herself for recognizing so few of the names.

Marcia Williams was waiting for them in a sitting room upstairs. She was excited to see them, or pretended to be, and when she shook Sophie’s hand she gave her arm a little squeeze at the same time. She seemed nice, Sophie thought, but it was hard to think of her as the Prime Minister’s mistress. It was hard to think of her as anyone’s mistress. She was obviously very brainy, and her teeth were too big for her mouth. She wondered whether it was a case of needs must. Harold probably didn’t meet thousands of glamorous women in an average year, what with all the TUC meetings and the visits to the Soviet Union. Marcia might have been the closest Harold could get to Raquel Welch. But Sophie suddenly felt self-conscious, and wished she’d worn a longer skirt. She didn’t want to make Harold unsatisfied with his lot, if it was true that Marcia was his lot, or some of his lot. And she didn’t want to have to rebuff the Prime Minister, if he liked what he saw. That would be embarrassing.

Harold Wilson and Marcia Williams



They sat down, and Marcia ordered coffee and biscuits, and offered them cigarettes from a lacquered case on the coffee table. They talked about Number Ten, the odd shape of it, its deceptive size, how there was another entrance in another street entirely. Marcia’s answers were so smooth that they’d been worn away to almost nothing, and Sophie suspected that none of them had asked a question she hadn’t heard a thousand times that week.

‘Harold’s just on his way,’ said Marcia. ‘But I thought it would be nice to have a little chat first.’

‘Lovely,’ said Sophie.

‘Ever since I started watching Barbara (and Jim),’ said Marcia, ‘I’ve been brewing up plans.’

‘Oh,’ said Dennis. ‘What sort of plans?’